Heavy flooding overwhelmed the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston on December 11, 2024, owing to a clogged drain; water rose approximately three feet onto the road. The incident occurred during an intense rainstorm that had left roughly four inches of rain on the city during the evening rush hour. This flooding forced officials to close the tunnel and brought up new concerns about how resilient the city's infrastructure was to the changes in climate.
Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) officials blamed the flooding on some sort of clog in the drainage system, explaining that it was around 15 to 20 feet into the line. Furthermore, recent drought conditions have caused a lot of debris to build up on the roadways. Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver was quoted by CBS News explaining:
“This was a drainage clog that caused this issue. This was a very intense rainstorm. There's a lot of road debris that comes off of trucks and comes off of cars on a regular basis that ends up building up. Again, this is a tough one to get to. This is about 15 to 20 feet in the line, we believe. It took some time to clear. And as a result, this took a little bit of time to get going again.”
Excess rain overpowered the drain capacity, flooding about 400 ft of the roadway and both sides of it near the split of I-90/ I-93 around 7.00 pm. 130,000 gallons of water went to flood the roads and pathways.
Boston tunnel flood
According to NBC Boston, crews immediately responded by pumping out the water. The blockage wasn't clear until after four hours had passed. The tunnel finally reopened just around 11.30 pm.
Gulliver told the news outlet that pump trucks were sent out during this time to handle the surplus water, but initial estimates had wrongly indicated a pump station failure before the real cause was found to be a clogged drain.
He was further quoted as saying by an ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV:
“I want to assure people the tunnel systems are safe. This is a very, very rare occurrence that we have that kind of flooding. And again, to be clear, that that is surface water runoff.”
Infrastructure challenges
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said such flash floods would be a norm in the wake of the city adapting to environmental changes. Wu noted that such older infrastructure is more exposed than before during natural calamities, including extreme rain and storm surges.
"It's terrifying and that's just on any given day here in Boston," the mayor was quoted by CBS News.
“Between heat and flooding, rain and storm surge, those are the main areas where we're seeing our climate and weather patterns changing”, Michelle Wu added.
Gulliver acknowledged these concerns, saying that with climate change, more unprecedented events were hitting Massachusetts. He cited that over the last few years, rainfall and icing events have increased, and infrastructure maintenance needs to be readdressed. He told Boston 25 News:
“You only have to look at the last few winters to see things have changed. We’re getting a lot more rain events and a lot more icing events every year, and we need to treat our infrastructure as a result.”
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Future preventive measures
Following this incident, MassDOT has committed to inspecting drainage structures all over Boston for the next several days to avoid the recurrence of such an incident. Routine maintenance checks within two to three weeks of the flooding, but this incident has underlined potential gaps in infrastructure resilience to serious weather.
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